


Reading the Ink of Your Face

by JU_Zumester



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Asexuality, Expect lots of sad, Explicit Language, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Third Person Omniscient, Past Rape/Non-con, Roche Case, pov switching, second person narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-26 05:08:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4991383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JU_Zumester/pseuds/JU_Zumester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The subtle shift from "coworkers" to "friends" to "I don't even know what" is indistinct, and it's all Dan can do to hold on and not lose himself entirely in the chaotic, intoxicating, wonderful spiral that follows.</p><p>Sitting in front of Blair Roche's meager grave, Dan can't help but wonder what he did right and what he did wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. White Noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fiiona_XueLi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiiona_XueLi/gifts).



> I was prompted by Fiiona_XueLi to write something that involved cuddly!Dan and pouty!Rorschach. This is the result: an amalgamation of my ideas on what Rorschach would be like in a relationship (considering his thoughts on sex and his traumatic childhood).
> 
> Archive warnings are mostly for chapters 3-5, which may contain triggering material. Stay safe, guys.
> 
> [This fanwork may or may not contain spoilers and is subject to editing and improvement. Friendly feedback is appreciated.]

* * *

 

Under the tinted-yellow Morse code of street lamps, it happens. Slowly, without a definite beginning. The lines between partnership and friendship and something else blur without announcing their intentions. Become the fuzzy white noise of a broken radio. Leave Dan in blissful confusion that he’s not about to go investigating--detective or not.

A new perspective is being carved out of the old one, cutting away great chunks of ignorance and fear and anger and hate. Softer and kinder moments forge this new perspective in flame.

These incidents seem isolated to an untrained eye. Random and chaotic. And maybe they are. And maybe that’s what Dan likes the most about life with Rorschach.

The fact that one minute, he’s controlled and confident and bringing an assailant to the ground in seconds, and the next, he’s weaving his way through the cavernous spaces of a burning building, making bridges across impossible gaps and saving lives in spite of insurmountable odds against an enemy as merciless and unpredictable as natural disaster.

Moments with Rorschach are fleeting and wordless, like he is. Easy to treasure. Hard to forget.

* * *

 

On a patrol one night, as their opponents drop around them, Dan and Rorschach remain back to back just a little longer than necessary, enjoying each other’s minimal warmth through the layers of Nite Owl’s armor and Rorschach’s formal wear. They take alternating deep breaths. Scan the contents of the alley--the five unconscious bodies lying there. Dan feels Rorschach’s muscles shift and stretch as he rolls his shoulders. Dan steps away only because he doesn’t want to risk any of the men waking before they’ve been securely tied, and the police notified.  
  
Even after moving to restrain the defeated adversaries, he turns around to see Rorschach still standing there in the center of the alley. Looking at him, head tilted to the side.

* * *

 

Over a week later, Rorschach goes down when a stupid kid (a budding drug dealer, high on Dan-doesn’t-even-want-to-know) produces a blade from his sock and cuts deep while Rorschach’s focus is on detaining his lackey friends.  
  
It’s all Dan’s fault really, for not getting there soon enough. For not having 360 degree vision. For not being all powerful. And there are just so many of them, and if Dan had just gotten his partner out of there sooner, been able to apply pressure sooner, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. If Rorschach took better care of himself, ate better food, nursed injuries, treated himself as human and perishable, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But by the time the fight is over, Rorschach has lost a decent amount of blood. And back in Dan’s basement as he strips him of his shirt, cleans his wound with shaking hands, chastises himself for allowing his nerves to get to him as he prepares to stitch Rorschach up… Dan only gets so close because he’s shaken. His fingers only linger where they need to. His partner’s warmth only feels so good because it means that he’s alive and kicking.  
  
Dan is only left tossing and turning in bed so many hours later because Rorschach is his partner, and he might have died that night, and of course that frightens Dan, of course that upsets him, and who wouldn’t be upset if the person they--

* * *

 

Rorschach drops his hat chasing a man who has fled the scene of a robbery and Dan’s the one to pick it up. As it exchanges hands, Rorschach looks up and catches the stare that should have been suppressed by now. Eyes Dan’s mouth, turned up in what can only be described as a smile. “Wouldn’t want to see you lose this,” Dan says, because it’s true. He would miss the familiar outline of his partner’s fedora and the noir detective persona that comes with it. He can’t quite pin down why Rorschach’s hat means so much to him.

Doesn’t consider that it isn’t his hat at all.

* * *

 

Dan feels the park bench shake under his thighs as Rorschach sits down next to him, a cold subway sandwich nestled in the palms of his gloves. He works on it in silence and the sound of chewing should be the only sound that Dan can hear but, encroaching on the sanctity of his breakfast, hard earned after a night of fighting crime, is the sound of his own heartbeat. It thuds against the inside of his chest cavity, straining to get out. Threatening to break skin and crack ribs in the process.

Because (and maybe Rorschach realizes this and maybe he doesn’t but) his partner is leaning on him.

* * *

 

Warm leather slides across the back of Dan’s neck, lighting his nerves on fire even after they’ve been worked raw by a night of near-constant fighting. Even through Nite Owl’s armored skin.

Adrenaline has both of them shaking in their uniforms.

With the subtle jerk of his wrist, he prods Dan forward and Dan bring his forehead down to Rorschach’s. Latex meets latex. The weight of Rorschach’s hand on the back of Dan’s neck tells him that Rorschach is leaning on him, relying on him. This comes as no surprise. Rorschach has been relying on him all night. And, bringing a hand to the back of Rorschach’s neck, putting a fraction of his weight onto his partner and closing his eyes only to lose himself in the beating heart of the city and in the rhythmic in and out of Rorschach's breath, Dan relies on Rorschach, too.

And if their feet are a little closer together than usual, their breaths a little heavier, their eyes eventually meeting in New York’s predawn, neither of them are ready to admit it.

Neither of them are ready to let go of the other and return to their mortal lives. Their civilian personas. Their average, every-day clothes and their bare faces. Neither of them are ready to return to a world that does not speak in punches. Even if the dangers of vigilante life are much greater than the dangers of life as an unnamed passer-by, Rorschach has always felt safer behind the mask, and Nite Owl has always felt more alive.

“My place,” Dan says, before Rorschach can end the moment with a “Good job,” or a “Good night,” or a “See you tomorrow, Nite Owl.”

“My place. For coffee.”

It’s an offer that he’s made countless times, but when Rorschach nods, gives his gruff little murmur of affirmation, there’s something between them that wasn’t there before.

And Dan isn’t even sure when “before” was.

The whole ordeal is an unidentifiable, unquantifiable chunk of their lives, living and breathing and feeding off of their emotions and their identities. And looking back, he realizes again and again that the beginning was just as fuzzy and indistinct as the end.


	2. More-Than

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coffee happens. Then other things happen. (Second Person Narrative, centered on Daniel.)

* * *

 

Taking his hand to pull him into the Archie, your fingers linger in contact with his palm a little longer than necessary. There is something warm and electric in your partner tonight; a worry hard-wired into his lean structure. He stands there, in the frame of the hatch, your warm breaths dancing in the pink sunrise. Your fingers slip away and the memory of the pressure of his palm against yours fades from your hand, the ghost of a touch.

“Good night out there,” you say, in what shouldn’t be a whisper but is. As if the value of the night will neutralize if you don’t recognize it.

Rorschach nods faintly. Shadows cast light and dark onto the blacks and whites of his face, metamorphosing from one heat signature to another. He passes you. Collapses into the co-pilot’s seat. You linger there for a few seconds before taking your place in the pilot’s chair.  
  
You want to say something, but you’re not sure what. Words linger on your tongue, but their exact shape and purpose are as unknown to you as they are to Rorschach. Your fingers hover over the controls and your mouth opens, automatically, instinctively. “Look, I…”

He doesn’t turn to look at you. In fact, Rorschach is paying an unnatural amount of attention to his gloves, looking anywhere but at you. Perhaps he simply isn’t in the mood to talk. Probably tired. Of course he’s tired. You promised him coffee. No sense stalling, so why are you sitting there with your mouth wide open? You really need to start planning your sentences instead of opening your mouth and coming up with words halfway down the road.

“Nevermind. Sorry. Let’s get going, shall we?”

“Hmn.”

* * *

 

The soft thunk of coffee mugs on tablecloth hang in the air as an excuse for impending silence. They give you a reason not to speak; not to desperately fill in the gaps with words and actions. You sit across from him and catch yourself consciously focusing on not staring at that ever-changing mask, or that perfectly fitted trench, or at the careful way he carries himself. You’re not sure why it takes so much energy not to stare, actually. You’re not sure what it is about him that’s so…

And he’s not telling you to stop. Rorschach hooks a thumb under his mask and lifts it above his nose, the sound of latex rubbing against stubble just loud enough to register above the ticking of your kitchen clock. He brings the mug to his lips and takes a long drag of coffee and he’s not telling you to stop, not making some sarcastic commentary, not breaking you up with harsh, gruff sounds carved out of menacing silence.

“Rorschach?”

The mug halts on its way back down to the table. His head hits two notches to the side, the hand of an unseeing clock. He is utterly quiet.

“You okay, buddy?”

Skin bunches beneath the mask. A frown? Latex moves to accommodate it and life leaps into the ink of Rorschach’s face in response to newly found heat. “What makes you think I’m not?”

“Well it’s just that… You seem quiet.”

“I am quiet.”

“More quiet.”

“If you want small talk, I can provide small talk,” Rorschach says, and it’s just like him. Just like him to avoid the clear intent of your sentence to the bitter end. He’s not stupid, but he sure likes to act that way sometimes.

“I want to know that you’re okay.” It’s bold of you to be so blunt about your intentions. You don’t often choose to show the concern that you feel for your partner on a regular basis, if only because he wouldn’t appreciate it. Would resist your attempts to help more than he already does.

When Rorschach answers you--halfway through his coffee--his voice sounds strained. “I’m fine.”

“But someone else isn’t. Working a case?” You stare at the empty bottom of your mug, imagining what must be behind that mask. Wondering what swirling clouds of emotionless ink seek to hide.

"Yes.”

“You don’t usually do private cases.”

He doesn’t answer. There’s nothing to say.

The two of you stand up at the same moment to return your mugs to the sink. “I can get that,” you say, but he ignores you. Makes his way to the sink in a few brisk steps, standing side by side with you, your shoulders touching. He bypasses your open hand and sets the mug in the sink, resting his hands on the edge of the counter. Stands there, unmoving, as though he can’t decide whether to stay or sit down.

“Rorschach--”

“Might be busy the next few days. Don’t know how this will go down. Don’t want to… enk… Don’t want to let anyone down.” The grip he has on the counter is deadlocked. It looks as though he is reaching for something that isn’t there. You lift your hand and run barely-present fingers across the outer shell of Rorschach’s skin, the worn fabric of a brown trench coat. He bristles at the touch.

“You know, I could come--”

“No. This is going to be a quick case. Too many people will just complicate matters. I need to get this done and over with. Need to have something good to tell her family when I…”

You eye him carefully, take in his voice, reticent against the hum of the day. The indecisive hover of your fingers above his trench becomes the irrefutable touch of a close friend. A partner. The pressure of your touch bites down through the fabric and you find yourself pulling him roughly to you. The scuffling of shoes prods you forward. Rorschach doesn’t resist--

\--and your lips are finding his--

\--and he doesn’t care that you’re doing something that he would normally deem deplorable, inappropriate conduct of two professionals--

\--and his lips are finding yours--

\--and somewhere along the road of two bodies colliding like galaxies flung through space, a kiss happens--

and it is warm and it is electric and it is terrifying and it is wonderful and it feels like home. Your upper lip wraps over his and his bottom lip plays around with yours and you connect and heat and pressure culminate into one brief, energetic, here-one-minute-gone-the-next moment. And it's obvious that Rorschach doesn't know what he's doing, but whatever it is, he's definitely reciprocating, in some way or another, and you're feeling all of the differences between his lips and the lips of everyone you've ever loved and then all of that is melting away. And in that moment, you are certain that there is nothing in the world that feels better than Rorschach’s unmasked lips on yours. Nothing feels better than the transfer of energy between you. Nothing feels better than stale adrenaline and growing exhaustion and the light of dawn and the cool, familiar kitchen and trench coat against latex and skin against skin and--

“Daniel!” He pushes you away with force that you weren’t expecting. You stagger backwards and hit the kitchen wall, feeling dizzy from the lack of oxygen and the fact that you’ve just been forcefully knocked off balance by hands that had been inviting two seconds ago.

Plausible deniability. Of course. Just like Rorschach. Just like his touch--

“Leaving. Don’t expect me tomorrow. Might be a tough case.” He marches back to the table, grabs his gloves and pulls them onto his hands unceremoniously. Stops in the doorway to the basement. “Thank you for the coffee.” Pulls his mask down over his chin and disappears like a phantom at the end of the witching hour.

Rorschach hasn’t thanked you for something as simple as post-patrol coffee since the first time you offered it, and you can’t shake the thought that it isn't the coffee that he's thanking you for at all.


	3. RIP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You live. You fight. You eat. You sleep. You breathe. And then you're nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second Person Narrative, centered on Rorschach. Violence ahead. Stay safe.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I've only seen the movie's portrayal of the Roche case. Everything else I know about this particular part of Rorschach's life comes from fan fiction that I've read (which is, admittedly, not always 100% accurate to the canon). My intentions for this chapter were to remain as realistic and in-character as possible, however because I haven't actually read the comic, there may be some discrepancies, and changes are made to accommodate the events that take place within this particular fic. If you notice any mistakes that you feel like I should know about, don't hesitate to tell me.

 

* * *

 

Nestled there in the rotting viscera of New York city, a strip of dilapidated fence here, a cracked concrete pathway there, a broken window, long since boarded up, a door skinned of its paint, the ghosts of screams running in lazy circles around the chimney. You don’t know how you sense them. They’ve long since faded from the range of human hearing. You just do. It’s something you feel more than you hear. Something you know more than you sense. You don’t need confirmation to be certain that people have died here.

Tendrils of darkness reach up into the sky and leech its remaining light. The sun will soon sink under the horizon, and bathe New York in an all encompassing night. It’s a little early for you to be out, but you know that Gerald Grice has a job that ends at 7:30. You want to be in the house by the time he returns home. You want a chance at every nook and cranny of the place in search of the little girl he never should have met. You don’t want to risk her life in the aftermath of an altercation with a deranged kidnapper. A humanoid pig.

You don’t bother picking the lock. Just in case. Just in case Blair Roche is somewhere inside of this house, clinging to life or hope or some combination of the two. It only takes blunt force to splinter the cheap wood of the door around the knob and grant you access.

The gloomy insides of the house are poorly lit--the windows covered by nailed-up blankets and sheets or by planks of wood or any number of other miscellaneous objects; anything to keep ignorant passers by from seeing the filthy scum that lies within, the putrid excuse for human flesh that stalks these halls, the depravity, the greed--

You want to call her name, but you don’t. And maybe it’s because you won't risk scaring her away. And maybe it’s because you don’t want to confirm that there is no Blair Roche left to be scared by the gruff voice of a would-be hero.

The beam of your flashlight shines on a cluttered and grimy kitchen. The counter tops are rough to the touch. Your finger comes up redder than it was before.

Shine your light elsewhere. The pieces of a larger puzzle come into view. Fall into place within the dusty cavern of your mind. Rows of overused, bloody butcher’s knives rattling inside a cupboard. A metal lunch pail thrown to the edge of the room in feverish haste. Claw marks across wood. Viscous fluids, drying and crusting on the floor. A fireplace at one end of the kitchen, smelling of recent use.

You open it and find, among ashes and bits and pieces of half-melted material that you can’t name, panties. Small, flowered panties, ruffled at the waistline. Dirty but unburnt. And it doesn’t make sense that this article, of all things, is what would have survived the fire that burned everything else. Not unless it was removed beforehand. Not unless it was pulled, yanked, from a still-kicking body, only later to be inserted over the scattered remains of--

Outside, the sound of growling dogs catches your attention. You cross the room and peek out of one of two windows that aren't covered somehow. Windows leading into the backyard. Spot two malnourished German Shepherds fighting over entangled bones and scraps of clothing that end in a black and white stub. The remains of a human foot wrapped in shoe leather.

A small human foot. White, drained of all its blood, as pale and lifeless as the victim of a vampire’s bite.

* * *

 

You don’t plan it. If you can’t find yourself labeling the events that take place that night, you at least know what they're _not_.

This is not premeditated, and it’s not murder.

All along, it was there, lurking inside of the meat sack that your consciousness called home. The ability to kill. Not in the form of senseless destruction but in the cold, quiet, creeping desire to enact justice. The dispassionate will to end atrocity. That’s what you tell yourself.

It’s the only way to survive the killing of another. To avoid a-soul-for-a-soul. To continue as the arbiter of justice that you’ve always been, and not let the darkness consume you for all it's worth. It’s the only way to make Blair Roche’s death mean something.  
  
You force victory out of the void. You wring significance from the neck of deceased violence, forgotten by all but you.

You shove the rickety back door of the kitchen open and forge your way into the back yard. The dogs don’t put up much of a fight. Some might argue that they hadn’t known what they were doing when they tore into the unoffending flesh of a lively 6 year old, that they saw the meat as food and little more, but it’s not as though you’re about to talk philosophy with a couple of bloodied German Shepherds under the eye of the setting sun. They were a part of her death, all the same, and they’ll reap their punishment, all the same.

You make quick work of them. Slitting throats and aiming the flow away from you. Muffled whines fade into a wet gurgle. You’re merciful. No time for pain and suffering. Justice doesn’t have the patience for such things. Justice seeks to put an end to evil things, swiftly and without hesitation.

Your back hits the outer wall of the house. You wait for Grice to come home. Deliberately turn away from the mutilated body of what was once Blair Roche. Grip cooling animal meat between your fingers. Suck heat out of fur. Avoid the rivulets of blood spreading through dry grass. Ignore the massive stench of two fresh kills over the old traces of charred human bone.

The night is silent save for your steady heartbeat, pulsing its way from your heart to your fingertips, and the wind bites at your clothes uselessly.

Minutes later (you have no idea how many), dull vibration begins in your shoulder blades, transferring from the wall of the house to your stiff muscles. Grice is back, and he’s just slammed the front door.

“Who’s there?!” he shouts, in a voice that could wake the dead, but doesn’t. “Show yourself!”

You reestablish your grip on the lifeless canine in your arms and force it through the kitchen window. Hear flesh meeting glass meeting more flesh. A rapturous thud. Steady hands drag a second carcass across the yard and to the second window. You listen through the wall, gauging exactly where Grice is, shouting some nonsense about what a sick bastard you are, and you launch his second dog at him. A second thud, and when you reenter the house, he’s on the ground, scrambling to get his bearings, avoid the glass covering the floor, sticking his fingers into warm meat coming up with bloody hands. Sending screams into the night.

“What the h-hell, man, my dogs! What did you do to my dogs?!” The entirety of his body is shaking. Jiggling flesh hanging off of a pseudo skeleton--deplorable. Immoral. Worthless. A killer. A savage, perverted, shameless--

You fish a pair of handcuffs from your trench pocket and take two fistfuls of him, drag him to the fireplace, cuff him there, leave his left arm to twist awkwardly above his head, strained by the weight of his paunchy, complacent body.

“What is this about? You don’t got nothin' on me! Y-You can't come into my house and kill my fucking dogs and expect--”

You drop Blair’s underwear onto his rotund stomach. Give him a few seconds to take it in a second time.

“What, so this is about that little girl, huh? The one that went missing? That wasn’t me! I didn’t do _nothin'_! You _can’t prove nothin'_!”

You search the cabinets for something large and dull. Something that’ll make slow work of a man’s arm. Lean in close, two layers of latex and a few inches of thin air separating you two, but the distance feels no different from the vacuum of empty space, sound drowned out by the utter nothingness between floating heavenly bodies, no matter to travel through. “In a few moments, I am going to light this house on fire, and when I do, I’m going to leave you with this hatchet. You can choose to chop through your hand and escape and die of blood loss a few blocks down the road or you can choose to die here in the flames. Better choose quickly. Better hope you’re a good enough murderer, better hope you can cut through bone fast enough to leave this place with your life and never return.”

A splash of lighter fluid here, a gallon there. A line up and down the halls. Some for the counter tops, some for the walls, some inevitably landing on Grice himself.

You thrust the bloody hatchet into the man’s arms. Strike the match that will end it all.

And a voice, a sudden and unwelcome voice, weasels its way into your ears. And you worry that it is your voice, but it’s not. It’s not so rough around the edges. Not so bucket-of-nails thick.

“You don’t have to do this.”

And you don’t think about what Grice is doing.

“You don’t have to kill him.”

You don’t think at all.

“Justice,” you say.

“Murder!” he says.

“Execution.”

“Vengeance.”

“Yes!”

“No!”

And the match is lit. And it stands between you and the voice, lighting your faces in a yellow glow. Dirty trench. Brown Kevlar. Latex and ink. Goggles.

Fire meets lighter fluid.

“Better get moving, Nite Owl.”

RIP Miss Roche. RIP Walter Kovacs.


	4. Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second person narrative, Rorschach. Content warning: non-con, violent depictions (flashbacks) of rape. This chapter isn't 100% vital to understanding the plot of the fic, so skip it if that's not your thing.

 

* * *

 

You find it there, carved into a simple task such as the lighting of a match. Flashbacks, you might call them, if you believed in psychiatry. They’re zombified memories, half formed and serving no real purpose. A rotting strip of grief here, the beginnings of an image there, large, uncompromising bites taken out of its side. Sounds and smells that can walk and talk, but with no beating heart to call a ribcage home, no functioning brain. Severed nerves, refusing you the truth, and no sense of consciousness to tell the difference between honesty and deceit.

_“--not my fault that I can’t get it up. It’s fuckin’ cold in here, lady, don’t you have a fireplace?”_

_Incoherent mumbling, and then your mother’s voice fills your ears to the point that there’s nothing else. “Walter! Put on a fire. Go on! Make it quick! I said move!”_

_You remember the tangle of naked flesh, her limbs intertwined with his in a wet, sticky mess of tan and not-tan. And you remember being told what it means when two people decide to get naked together. You remember being told that it’s supposed to feel good. Supposed to be fun. But there’s nothing on your mother’s face--in her dark, impatient eyes or the downward curl of her lipsticked mouth--that tells you that she’s having fun. But you’re not going to ask. You remember what happened the last time you asked a question like that._

_“Raising a pervert, huh? The way he was starin’ at you. What, you gonna start chargin’ extra for the kid?”_

_Laughter, as you fumble with the matches on the fireplace. Laughter, as you do your best not to burn yourself in the process. Laughter, and maybe, you think, she’s doing it right after all._

You expect the match, cast aside like so many bad days, to ignite the house in flame. You are not prepared for the boot that follows it to the ground with marked precision, snuffing out arson before it has the chance to take place.

Shaking hands send signals to a shaking brain: to light another one. But before you can do that, he’s wrenching the matchbox from your hands. You are prepared for the screaming that should follow the anger in his eyes. Again, expectations.

_Her eyes follow you. In an instant, they can go from glazed with lust to bright with rage. The same hands that effortlessly glide over the exposed body of a man can pry your body from the shadows, shove you to the wall, remind you what a bad little boy you are…_

_And you wonder what it is about the human body that makes it capable of such extremes._

But the screaming never comes. And slowly, he lifts his foot from the charred match, broken under the weight of his heel. He reaches out to you with prying hands.

_“--said come here, you little shit. You’ll keep your mouth shut and you’ll like it, and your mother don’t have to know a thing. I ain’t payin’ double, do you hear me? You’re gonna fucking like this. So just keep your damn mouth shut.”_

_And you try. You try so hard to keep your mouth shut._

You are vaguely aware of the fact that he is talking to someone. Rattling off an address and an assessment of the situation at hand, but you’re not sure what the situation is.

The ringing of metal--of a hatchet being thrown to the ground several feet away--resonates in your ears.

 _And warm flesh meets warm flesh and this is not fun. This is absolutely not fun. This doesn’t feel good. It hurts. You had no idea that sex meant_ that _, and you had no idea that something like that could be inside of you and this is wrong, this is so, so, so wrong and why would Mother do this for anyone? Pain shoots up into your core from between your legs, sets off fireworks in your eyes, turns the grays of this dismal little room into brilliant whites and blacks._

Growling. Animalistic, hungry for something, but you’re not sure what. You hear thrashing, and voices. Short, clipped laughter and then a trenchant few words following it. Silence, and then a violent thud.

_Somewhere, hiding behind layers of pain and tear and confusion, is something along the lines of pleasure. And you’re afraid to dredge it up out of the cool darkness slipping from your fingers like sand because you don’t want this to be a good thing. You don’t want it to feel good._

_The moment it becomes good is the moment you become Mother._

_And you bite your lip against the sounds straining at the insides of you--sounds that struggle against your humanity--until blood runs down the corner of your mouth and the sound of flesh against flesh gets louder and he’s moaning, he’s not keeping his mouth shut, and you wonder what the purpose of your silence has been all of this time and--_

You are exhausted. All the way down to the bones, you are exhausted. And hands are gripping you and it is only then that you realize that you’re the one that’s thrashing. You’re the source of such inhuman sounds. You are the animal.

Unable to keep your damn. mouth. shut.

* * *

 

“Rorschach!”

The name feels warm and familiar on your ears. Unyielding hands pin you to a humming metal wall. You’re sitting down (since when?) and he’s holding you there, and you could probably break his grasp if you wanted to--force his elbow in here, slide to your left there, use the weight he has pressing against you to force him to the floor, get the upper hand--but you don’t.

You are _exhausted_.

He says nothing to you past your name, but the weight of a thousand almost-words settle in his eyes. Goggles hang around his neck. His cowl rests, crumpled, against his back. The hum of the wall only seems to get louder with time. You realize that you’re in the Owlship, and through Archie’s eyes, you see unadulterated darkness. Even the stars have hidden themselves, tonight, behind so many layers of smoggy cloud. And you want to do the same.

You’re grateful for the face of latex that the rest of the world sees, hiding your iniquity. Hiding your flaws behind secretive black and white.

Nite Owl doesn’t speak. And neither do you.

* * *

 

Somehow, you let him drag you into his house, with no pretense of, “Would you like to come over for some coffee, Rorschach?” “Oh yes, most certainly, Daniel.”

Your life becomes one big flashback. Undead. And something inside of you recognizes this as a transformation, but in the wake of such chaos, it’s all you can do to remain conscious. You catch bits and pieces of dialogue, half of which are yours, though you can’t remember thinking the words that you hear spoken from your own lips.

“--killed her, with his bare hands--”

“But _we_ don’t kill _him_. We’re the good guys, damn it!”

“--in the fireplace but nothing else had survived, flower print and human ashes--”

“--back to me, stay with me, Rorschach, come on--”

“--can’t breathe--”

“--take it off!”

“...my face--”

Layers are stripped away, cold fabric from shaking skin. Heaps of leather and cotton, a pile on the floor. On top of that, an orphaned fedora. Two feet away, a single dress shoe. Three feet from that, another one.

“--one in the world should be that way, the world shouldn’t be that way--”

“But it is.”

“--shouldn’t, filthy pig, should have died, needed to be dead, justice--”

“--doesn’t work that way--”

Hands, trembling, at the threshold between skin and latex, and you’re holding onto his wrists, telling him no. And the only reason that he doesn’t is because he knows that you’d never forgive him if he did.

And you’re in a skin-tight tank and your purple pinstriped suit pants and underneath you is an acquiescent sofa cushion, not a bed, and you almost wish that you had a pillow underneath your head, an excuse to feel so _exhausted_ , but both of you are afraid of what a bed would mean.

Even now, unnamed memories of a kiss float in and out of your subconscious.

And his warm skin is on yours, and you want him to hurt you. You want to feel cold tendrils of pain crawl from bottom to top and turn your eyes into a cinema display. You don’t want this to feel good, because the moment it becomes good is the moment you become--

“Rorschach.”

 _“Walter!”  
  
_ _"Not my fault you raised a pervert, Sylvia--"_

\--and unconsciousness is like a city blackout, tentative order followed by unscheduled nothing.


	5. Terminal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stuff happens. Second person narrative; Daniel.
> 
> Expect around 3 more chapters after this? Something like that, yeah. We'll see. This might be the first time I successfully complete a chapter fic. Wow. Don't get your hopes up.

 

* * *

 

2:14 AM, and the pain in your eyes tells you that it’s time to close them.

On the other side of the couch, the Terror of the Underworld sits cocooned in a blue and red plaid blanket.

Rorschach’s protests hadn’t made any sense. He’d fought to justify the insanity creeping through the seams in his clothes to the very last inkling of consciousness, reeking of hatred, his hands shaking with the desire to kill, and it had terrified you. You’d always known that your partner was a little off kilter, a little broken, but what Rorschach had seen in Gerald Grice’s kitchen had sent him spiraling to new depths, and you’re not sure you can repair the damage.

It’s not the kind of thing that can be stitched up with dissolvable sutures from the safety of the Owl’s Nest. It’s something that’s permeated Rorschach’s skin, is hurtling through his bloodstream, is eating away at his mind; a virus to which no man is immune.

Trauma. Something that takes years to heal, if at all.

You can still feel the crumpled fabric of his suit jacket, slipping through your fingers as he struggles to be rid of you. You can hear the apparitions of pain escape his lips in the form of barely audible whimpers. Horror and anger and blood lust personified in human flesh.

“Died,” he’d said, over and over, as though trying to make sure. As though, by some strange twist of fate, Blair Roche might have been hiding in some corner of the yard, or lounging in a forgotten closet, or just under the floorboards. Waiting. Not dead at all.

And none of it had been _right_. Well, that much is expected (if anything can be expected in the aftermath of a case quite so grizzly and burnt), but you're struck by just how _wrong it all is_. The trembling of his hands, the jagged edges of his voice, made all the more apparent by choked syllables and lost consonants. The way he’d searched the Owlship with his eyes, as though lost.

The entire trip back had been wrong. So very wrong. Because there was nothing in Rorschach that you could comfort or soothe. Nothing left of him to heal. There had been nothing but the hardened, bloody shell of a dead person, rigor mortis setting in, body heat radiating out into the surrounding air and being replaced by the slowing of blood in still veins. You had reached in, hoping to find a person, and come up with so much nothing. So many meaningless words. _Died, died, died._

And you can’t help but feel bitter, because you had wanted all along to get to know the person behind Rorschach’s mask. It had been a long-held fantasy of yours, to look into his eyes and say his name to his face and smile because you had a real, human friend with needs and desires and a life beyond patrol. Hollis was great, but he was a mentor. He wasn’t a, “Let’s go out on the town and do something crazy,” kind of person. He was a, “Let’s get together at my place and reminisce about old times,” kind of person. And now that you’ve tasted those lips, had a chance at the human that owned them, the human inside of Rorschach had gone and died on you.

He had died alone, in an icy, tenebrous little world hidden under layer after layer of blunt force trauma to the heart.

You can’t imagine how the thing under Rorschach’s mask could have survived seeing what he saw, but you can hope.

You can peel away the latex, run fingers over the skin that lies underneath, and search for that person and hope that his heart hasn’t quite given out yet. You can breathe life into the same lips you kissed just days ago. You can pull that person out of the icy depths of trauma and hold him in your arms and hope that help hasn’t arrived too late to reverse the damage.

You can act on the assumption that he isn’t a terminal patient.

And when you do lift shaking fingers to Rorschach’s mask, imagining for the thousandth time what lies underneath, he tells you no.

And you’re not sure what to think of that, other than that it’s exactly what you expected.

* * *

 

11: 48 PM, and after too many meaningless words and empty threats, a glassy darkness fills his eyes and the light fades from his pupils.

He passes out more than falls asleep, and when he does, you’re ready, guiding his quavering body down to the sofa, afraid to touch him more than abjectly necessary. Expecting a hand to grip your wrist and growl misguided threats, but being met by no resistance. And that should scare you as much as the rest of this evening has.

He stays there, to your relief, curled up and shivering in his sleep, wearing only his mask, his pants and a tank top. You’re sure that part of this is shock settling in--from the way he shivers, and the stiffness of his joints, and the nonsense he was spouting just before it was lights out for the fearless vigilante--but was all of it the shock of the situation at _hand_?

Somehow, you’re pretty sure that there is more to it than that. There are secrets to be felt, squirming just beyond your grasp, tucked away in just how Rorschach flinched from your touch, paid careful attention to where your hands went, even in the midst of such chaos, even while not seeming to know where _he_ was; in the way his voice hitched and rode higher than it normally does, the way he carried himself, as though he thought he was smaller than he actually was.

You wonder whether Rorschach was living in 1975 New York or somewhere else entirely. Another place, or perhaps another time.

You put the thoughts to rest long enough to stand, catch your breath, and put together the beginnings of a plan. Tramp up the stairs, quickly changing out of your suit (into an over sized sweater that Hollis got you last Christmas and a pair of worn-in jeans), and then back down the stairs, in search of some blankets to quell Rorschach’s shaking. You’re careful not to wake him in the process. Don’t want a repeat of the last few hours.

Next, it’s to the kitchen for a fresh batch of coffee. Tonight’s going to be a long night.

* * *

 

2:26, and your eyes still want to close and stay closed, but you refuse, blinking lazily and pushing doggedly into the beginnings of the new day.

You don’t want to think about what would happen if Rorschach woke up alone.

So you decide (for the 10th or 11th or 12th time?) to remain where you are, and swallow down the remains of another cup of coffee (you’ve lost count of how many), and ignore the way your fingers quaver and the way you can’t seem to hold still long enough to relax. You don’t worry about deciphering how much of this is the coffee at work, and how much is pure, unadulterated concern. You  _shouldn't be relaxed_. (And you're not even sure why it's so important that you're not, that you don't let yourself forget for even a second that this is murder--)

You want to touch him; run fingers over rough latex. But you don’t want to risk waking him, know that he needs his rest, and know that if he catches you with your hands on his mask, there will be hell to pay. So, you sit and watch, fantasies dissolved into a tender, loving glance every few minutes. Into the kind of determination that keeps a man up throughout the night, guarding the person he--

And he decides that this must be--

That it can’t be anything other than--

That what he’s feeling is--

\--and he’s _so royally fucked_.

* * *

 

2:32, and you’re opening your eyes before you’ve had the chance to recognize that they were closed, and there is a _whump_ as Rorschach’s blanket hits the ground, uncurling from around him and revealing him to be a massively grumpy, bleary eyed butterfly like nothing you’ve ever seen.

You’re standing up by reflex alone, disoriented and reaching out for something to steady you. “Rorschach? Hey, hey, it's okay, buddy, it’s just me,” you mumble.

Your partner is investigating his surroundings with clenching-and-unclenching fists, looking for something to punch, and you have enough clarity to hope that it’s not you. “What--”

“You, uh, fell asleep. Last night.”

His face, under the half mask, is pale and his lips are moving into different shapes, forming the silent beginnings of words, and then losing their forms before taking on new ones, still silent. “...have to go,” he says.

“Oh, no you don’t.” You’re coming back to your senses, and you know that Rorschach out on the streets is the last thing you need right now. For his sake, and for yours (and for the lowlives on the street that he’d probably beat to a pulp in the state he’s in). “We need to talk about this,” you venture. Try to gauge just how well he’s taking this, how lost he is, what your odds are of receiving a right hook to the nose.

“No.”

“Not now. But soon.”

Rorschach reaches up, feels out the parts of himself that are still there; seems overwhelmingly relieved that his mask is still in place, if pulled up to his nose (though surely he didn’t have to lift his hands to his face to know that?), runs calloused fingers along his unshaven jaw line, down his neck, and stops at his collarbone. The placement of his hands makes him look like he’s cooking up ways to crawl out of his own skin, and you’re almost afraid that he’ll try.

“I’d never take it off without your permission,” you venture further.

He gives you a look, and his inkblots say, “And that’s why _you_ still _have_ a face.”

Instead of actually saying that, though, he repeats, “Have to go,” and you’re certain that the moment you take your eyes off of him is the moment he disappears into the icy hollows of New York.

And you try your very best not to.

* * *

 

3:03, and the uncooked half of a pancake is hitting the hot surface of a pan, sandwiching oil in between. And if you don’t think about the macabre presence sitting at the table behind you, it almost feels like an average morning.

“I’m so unused to seeing you during the day,” you admit, “that your ink almost looks… more ghastly than usual.”

You turn around with a stack of pancakes on a plate and set it in front of him. He gives an almost invisible nod. “Hrm.” He hardly registers the presence of food before deciding to devour it, and that, at least, hasn’t changed.

* * *

 

3:17, and Rorschach is staring at his plate (licked clean, every calorie absorbed). He looks as though, maybe, he’s forgotten where plates go after being used.

Ink migrates thoughtlessly from the top of his face to the bottom.

“You done with that?” You’re not sure why you’re asking.

He doesn’t answer, and again, you’re reminded that the human inside of him is dead. That the only thing holding his body in a phantasmal imitation of life is Rorschach’s shell.

* * *

 

4:45, and you want to say something, you really do, but the words aren’t coming to you. And you’re angry, because of all of the times you’ve talked his ear off mid-patrol, spent wasted minutes ranting about things that didn’t matter, repeated the same ideas under different pretenses and used the same sentences in new orders, until you were sure he was going to throw _you_ at the enemy, just to be done with it. And now that your words really matter, you don’t have any.

And Rorschach is still sitting at the table.

And he is dead.

* * *

 

5:11, and you need to use the bathroom, and you know that this is his chance to bolt and never come back, and you’ve been holding it for almost half an hour, and hell, you are _not doing the potty dance like a goddamned child_ \--

And you’re pretty sure that he’s beginning to petrify where he sits at the table. Putting down roots and growing, permanently, in the middle of your kitchen.

And you stand there in the doorway with his back to you, staring at the hiked up parts of his mask, and the threadbare tank he has on, and his lean, toned arms, covered in a littering of freckles, and you’d assumed he was a redhead from the color of the stubble he’s sporting but damn he has a lot of freckles--

And you’re pretty sure that he won’t go anywhere if you pop into the bathroom for two minutes.

And you can’t hold it any longer, so you go. Try not to make a show of scurrying up the stairs. Try not to alert him to the opportunity you’re about to give him.

And you’re sure he wouldn’t bolt--

\--except that Rorschach doesn’t put down roots in anything except conspiracy.

* * *

 

5:14, and Rorschach is gone.


	6. End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third person. A thoughts-and-feels kind of chapter.

 

 

* * *

 

Unsteady legs carry him to the rundown apartment complex that he’s begrudgingly spent the last 18 years of his life living in. A collection of walls hiding sinful people doing sinful things, smelling of blood and sweat and semen. Life's basest instincts taking hold. Turning men into animals. The frame of the building writhing, squirming under the weight of its own shame packed upon shame packed upon shame. Greedy liars taking what money the poor men and women of this complex have to offer. Bleeding the life out of those already half dead.

Shameful, evil-doing hands sift through his room's meager stash of material possessions. Make desperate grabs for whatever might be useful on the street; creating two piles out of what used to be his house. 

Walter hasn’t been here in days, and he’s as good as dead if he shows his face to his landlady again. It’s a good thing, then, that he doesn't plan to.

The quick journey from room to room--a sack slung over his back, grubby hands stuffing cans of food and discarded items of clothing into it--is not sentimental in the least. Rorschach is no more attached to this place than Walter ever was. Physical things come and go, and to become too reliant on any one of them is to become weak. Everything dies. _Everything_. Even the innocent things. Even the things that justice seeks to protect.

He holds the same standards in dealing with people.

Better to drift with no foreseeable beginning and no foreseeable end than to become rooted in worldly things and worldly desires. _Like Daniel_ \--

He leaves a note scrawled in deliberately sloppy handwriting. He doubts that anyone would recognize his handwriting as the writing of the vigilante Rorschach's (it's not as though anyone in this building notices him anyway, sees him as anything but a stain on the carpet), but he's not taking any chances.

 _Not coming back_ , it says. _Evict me._

He retreats back into the shadows, the door unlocked and the window wide open.

* * *

 

The next Crimebusters meeting is just a couple of days after the incident, and when Nite Owl makes his way in, he’s acutely aware of how alone he is, even in a room full of people that he's known for years. It's a strange feeling, to be lonely in a crowded room, under the scrutinizing smiles of people whose company you should enjoy. In the absence of shifting black and white, he feels like a photo, overexposed, a disrupted silhouette that's forgotten its shape. He’s also acutely aware of the ease in tension (without the usual snappy remarks from Mr. Right-Wing, the accusations, the pokes and prods that beg for a response).

 

Despite this, no one chooses to verbally recognize Rorschach’s lack of presence. And that’s not odd. Rorschach doesn’t show up to every meeting, and when he does, he only opens his mouth to correct someone that he feels is wrong, or remind them all why they're here, as though they might have forgotten.

Dan settles down into his seat, adjusts his cape, glances around the table at his colleagues and friends. Silk Spectre, leaning forward, her fingers knit together in a web in front of her face as she thinks. The Comedian, puffing on a cigar under the dour gaze of Ozymandias--who is in the middle of a presentation on the current political state of the American northeast. Dr. Manhattan, seeming to be in ten places at once (and maybe he is).

Rorschach. Wandering the streets of New York, or burying his fists in someone else’s gut, or working a job that doesn’t make him nearly as much money as he needs.

And nobody cares.

And Dan realizes that it’s more than likely that he truly is all that Rorschach has in this world. The thought makes him feel needed, but it also chills him to the bone.

* * *

 

Somewhere along one of the bleeding veins of the city, sheltered in the half-cover offered by nearby vendor’s stand, a sulky redhead sits with his eyes on incoming traffic. His face, haggard and unwelcoming in its fight against the elements, offers no respite from the cold, harsh truth that is life. Passersby do their best to avoid meeting his gaze, and they're wise to. He (Walter? Rorschach? _Walterschach_?) has never been a good liar, never good at hiding the brutal truth sitting behind his crystalline blue eyes.

He well and truly does look like a hobo; wearing as many layers as Rorschach ever did, though with more frayed edges and holes than the vigilante would ever show himself in.

He’s wearing every article of clothing that the now-deceased Walter owned. Rorschach’s skin is stashed in one of the many hideaways he has scattered throughout the city. Though he doesn’t enjoy the charade, he wears the face of Walter Kovacs with as much humanity as his lifeless husk can offer and hopes that the general population doesn’t see through the farce.

One commuter--briefcase in hand, suit tailored to perfection--almost passes him completely, but stops mid-stride. Makes the mistake of thinking about what Walter is, and what he means. The man turns and looks Walter up and down, the thoughts lingering in his eyes ( _go to work, be on time, get promotion, make money, so you can go back to work all over again_ ) melting into something like pity. Walter sneers; waiting for the man to get on with his life already.

Before he does, he fishes around in his pocket and drops a few coins at Walter’s feet. 42 cents, it adds up to. “Wish I had more--”

“Don’t need your money,” Walter growls. Though his voice doesn’t hold that over-the-edge, stuff-of-nightmares fifth dimension that Rorschach’s does, it’s enough to startle the businessman, who's probably off to steal someone’s money from inside a cubicle. No better than a thug. Perhaps worse. Overcharging people, weaseling their money out of their bank accounts and making them _like_ it, gaining their trust and breaking it all the same. Disgusting.

“Look, guy, I was just trying to--”

Undead eyes regard the man with an imposed, hands-off, kind of justice. Inject guilt into his psyche. Turn the money on the ground into the most visible kind of prostitution. The kind that isn’t hidden inside of whorehouses, behind locked doors, lying in the sheets of foul smelling beds, drowned out by virgin moans, paid for under the table, stashed in the memories of lustful men and dishonorable women.

The man leaves the money on the ground, bundles himself further within the layers of his coat and hurries on down the sidewalk. Walter doesn’t so much as lay a finger on the filthy money at his feet. Doesn’t look at it. Pretends it’s not there. And an hour later, out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of a thin little boy, lips turned blue by the cold, reach down to scoop the coins into his pockets before anyone can protest. Scurry off down the street in the direction of a cheap corner store.

Walter isn’t sure what to make of that.

* * *

 

Inside the Owl’s Nest, Daniel Dreiberg stares through the glass at the spandex of his suit. He’s sitting on the edge of a rickety stool, its legs uneven, causing him to tilt back and forth with every shift of weight. The basement is much colder than should be comfortable, drafts of frigid air wafting in through the tunnel, but under the weight of all of Daniel’s disjointed thoughts and fears, it’s breaking the boiling point.

It’s the third night that he’s been alone on patrol, and he’s not sure how much longer he can go on without knowing whether Rorschach will come slinking back into his life, or disappear for good, like the phantom he is.

And he wonders whether the last 10 years of his life have been one long witching hour.

He eyes his suit with a kind of contempt. Angry at himself for letting Rorschach leave. Angry at Gerald Grice for being a sadistic bastard. Angry at Rorschach for refusing help when he so clearly needs it. Angry at human nature for allowing all of these people, these _things_ , to exist as they are.

He pinches at the bridge of his nose, lets out a tempered sigh. Hands wander down his neck and to the protruding line of his collarbone. To the scar that runs just under it. Knife wound. Not that big a deal, in retrospect. But in a delicate enough spot to cause adrenaline to sober into something more concrete and long term.

Fingers crawl down his chest, across the bumps and imperfections that hide under his clothes, a road map of his life with Rorschach. A life that might be over--or ending, while he sits in his basement and reminisces about the past. Uselessly.

He stands, too quickly for his own good. Throws his shirt over his head and closes his fist around Nite Owl's goggles, dangling loosely from where they sit waiting for him every day. He needs to find that stubborn asshole, before…

 _Before_.

* * *

 

Rorschach is trudging through the gutters of the city’s dirtiest veins when a warm set of fingers curls around his upper arm. And for the smallest fraction of a second, he thinks, _Daniel_. Only Daniel would take such liberties, touching him as if he somehow had the right to his body, as if he’d spent ten lifetimes cultivating the trust to breach walls that run so deep--

Daniel. Or someone who is very, _very stupid_.

He spins around, putting together the pieces of a puzzle in the seconds between being touched and connecting his fist with the stranger’s face (too short to be Daniel, too blonde to be Daniel, dressed like a hobo, almost worse off than Walter, smells like beer and regret, fingers digging into Rorschach’s skin with a kind of possessiveness that Daniel never would have dreamed of, always caring more about Walter’s boundaries than his own desires--).

Definitely too stupid to be Daniel.

His fist guides the assailant to the wall, and skull-against-brick is a sound, a sensation, a language, that Rorschach knows better than almost anything. The smell of spoiling blood in the air. The feel of a writhing, living body underneath him. Proving to him that _his_ life isn’t over yet. That he still has something to fight for.

“Think it’s funny,” he growls, gloved fingers curling around a supple neck, adam’s apple shaking underneath his palm, airflow restricted, “to pick fights with me?”

Terrified eyes search his mask for signs of mercy and find an uncompromising wall of man. A cheap knife falls from his hand, forgotten, as Rorschach twists his wrist into positions that human bones aren’t meant to withstand. “N-No, _fuck_ , man, don’t kill me, fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, _christ, shit_ \--”

Rorschach pushes harder on the man’s neck, sinks more weight into him. Feels his throat close. “Wasting oxygen.”

The man’s struggles become weaker as his supply of air dwindles. He blinks stars out of his eyes. Struggles to keep a grip on his surroundings, not to lose track of where alley floor meets wall meets sky. “I’m sorry--”

“SORRY WON’T BRING HER BACK!”

The resonance in Rorschach’s voice seems to slow time around him, bringing a halt to the mechanical forward march of city life, the rats pretending to be humans, the flow of midnight traffic, the struggles of the warm body pinned between his hands and the brickwork. Sandwiched between two walls, equally as stubborn and unyielding as the other.

His attacker probably would have looked confused by Rorschach's words, if he’d been fully conscious. Instead, his head lolls forward, eyes glassy, and Rorschach releases his grip on the stranger just quickly enough to avoid killing him. He lets the man drop to the ground, jeans slowly being soaked by the puddle they’ve landed in.

“The end is nigh,” he mutters, takes a few steps back. “Don’t apologize for what you’ve already started.”

He leaves the man to awake from this nightmare, wet and alone. There’s no part of Rorschach left alive that thinks the nightmare will ever end.

* * *

 

“Did you and your boyfriend finally split up?” whispers a voice from behind Nite Owl, its owner pointing the cold steel of a gun barrel to the back of his head. Nite Owl wraps fingers around the barrel, without thinking, without allowing himself to think (that’s the kind of habit that gets you shot in situations like this) and wrenches it out of the gunman’s hands. Throws it out of reach before he can think to pull the trigger. Flips him to the ground, face first onto the alley floor.

“Rorschach? You’d rather him be here? You know he has no mercy for low lives like you.” It’s unusual for Nite Owl to make small talk like this, to indulge the petty words thrown around by would-be-assailants trying to distract him from the task at hand. But he’s starving for conversation, and he's been on his feet all night long, and running on a couple hours of sleep, it's all he can do to keep himself awake and moving.

He tries not to think about words like that (“boyfriend”) and what Rorschach would say about them if he were here.

Doesn’t even begin to ponder all of the reasons why a word like that will never apply to the Terror of the Underworld.

And he thinks, just before the cops arrive in all of their blue and red flashing glory, that someone _has_ recognized Rorschach’s absence. Not the masks that should be standing by his side, but the criminal scum that he spends his nights putting away.

Maybe that’s sad, but it causes Nite Owl a measure of relief, and a sliver of hope, that in the end, no one is forgotten. Not completely. That the memory of whoever is under Rorschach’s mask doesn’t rest solely on his shoulders.

* * *

 

Walter is rolling around last night’s words on his tongue, getting a feel for them in the new day’s cold air. Painting them with new meanings and new connotations. Making them feel truer and more real with each dimension added.

He makes his rounds of the city (that’s all he ever does, day and night; the only difference being the face that he happens to be wearing at the time). Peeks down narrow corridors and through dusty, unkempt windows. Stares down strangers from across crowded intersections and lives and breathes the iniquity they radiate off of themselves. Slowly becomes more and more a part of it. No more apartment walls to separate him from the darkest nights, no more well-wishes to hide him from the harshest truths.

It’s in the middle of all of this iniquity that he finds a manifestation for the new Walter Kovacs. The undead Walter Kovacs. The Walter that is a mask, rather than a person.

A rectangular slab of plywood, left abandoned, leaning against the side of a dumpster. Walter knows just the words he wants to put on it.

A way to speak to the city without speaking. A voice for the decaying parts of him that can’t prove themselves alive in the same way that Rorschach can with his fists.

 _The end is nigh_.

* * *

 

Daniel is on his way home from the library, and his head is lodged in the clouds, like it always is after too many hours tucked between the pages of a book.

Not too lost, though, to notice that there’s a new vagrant on the street, hovering around his favorite newsstand. He’s a small man, with short, wild curls tucked around his ears, piercing eyes hiding in the shadow of a strong brow, a mouth that doesn’t look capable of anything but a disappointed scowl. He's new, but he's already carved out his corner of the city, in the way people avoid him, walk around his little patch of sidewalk. And it's frightening how fast that happens. How quickly people take to the streets and are welcomed into a harsher place than the one that exists under a roof.

He looks beaten down by the world, and a part of Daniel wants to reach out to him, pull him out of the abyss he’s found himself in. His gaze slides upwards, to the sign that the man has propped against his shoulder.

 _The end is nigh_ , Daniel thinks, a chuckle rising out of the emptiness of his throat, _that sounds exactly like something Rorschach would--_


	7. Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nearing the end. I've never written anything referencing rape/non-con so bluntly before, so I hope I'm writing it well. My intent in this chapter, at least, was to focus on an accurate portrayal of asexuality (being an ace person, and seeing Rorschach as someone who can be easily written as ace). As always, feedback is appreciated! (Second person; Rorschach)

 

You don’t think about sex.

You just don’t. You don’t operate within that frame of reference, and every time society reminds you that sex--the perverted depravity of limbs around limbs, wet warmth that should be dry, tongues in places where tongues shouldn’t be, noises being made that are made nowhere else--is something that people _do_ think about, you are reminded just how different you are.

And you’ve been able to live with that. You choose to believe that you're better, somehow. More pure. That something inside of you is clean where they are filthy. And it's not hard. Not considering the house you grew up in, and the people you grew up around, all those noises in the night that stole lasting sleep from between a child's fingers.

Finding dark stains in your mother’s bed after a particularly busy night. Sex. Hearing animal noises vibrate out of alley walls. Sex. Money exchanged for goods and services. Lies told for the sake of pleasure. Two people, taking with no sense of remorse and no attempt at empathy. Sex, sex, sex.

And thinking those things, you are glad that you are above such iniquity. That you aren’t bound by the chains that have trapped those around you. In your day to day life, your lack of desire for these things, you think that such urges are a choice. That the filthy men and women that writhe on the floor in pulsing, heady knots have chosen to want something so disgusting as sex. You imagine that they once lead innocent lives, only to fall into systematic patterns of self-betrayal at 12, 13, 14…

You don’t think about sex.

But Daniel does.

* * *

 

The moment that recognition hits Daniel’s face is striking. It's a few valorous seconds, carved out of time, imbued with life between where the two of you stand, separated by the unfazed flow of foot traffic. The light that floods his eyes, the way his mouth twitches down and then up, the stiffening of his frame. You have that moment memorized, catalogued, tucked away into the small and neglected part of your mind that is dedicated to memory.

It’s the sign that gives you away. Of course, you should have guessed as much. Daniel knows you. He knows the kinds of words that come out of your mouth, the signature-by-design that you couldn’t scrub from your psyche if you tried. He’s your partner, and he could pick you out of a crowd, whether or not he knew your face, by the way you carry yourself, the words you speak, the mannerisms that linger behind you like shadows.

There’s no escaping that.

And maybe it’s relief you feel, when he starts coming your way. It’s not like you actually _wanted_ to quit being his partner. Maybe it’s terror, at the idea that you were so naked this whole time, your face decipherable under the mask, under so many layers of latex, all these years…

Either way, you find yourself taking deliberate steps backwards when he begins his advance. There’s no pretense between you. He knows who you are, and you know he knows, and he knows you know he knows, and you’re retreating into the nearest alley. A coward. And he’s not taking no for an answer. Always was a stubborn mule of a man. (This thought doesn't exactly displease you. It's not as if anyone less stubborn would have put up with you for so long.)

And in the resulting shadow’s gaping maw, he wraps fingers around your arm, and it’s nothing like the man on the street who so carelessly decided to pick a fight with you. It’s a calm, tender presence, making itself known without impositions and without assumptions. You want to punch him--you want a _reason_ to punch him, an _excuse_ \--and he leaves you with nothing but a smile and--

“Rorschach.” He mouths the word, giving it no sound, but all the power in the world. The look in your eyes tells him that he’s right, and removes any shred of doubt that might have lingered in him.

His eyes skitter over every inch of you, and you should feel violated, even under layers upon layers of clothing, but you don’t. You feel safe, in all of this gift-wrapped knowing. A twisted part of you likes the fact that he’s seen your face, that another one of your layers has been stripped away, ignores the fact that like an onion, there are only so many layers you have left, and that eventually he’s going to get to the center, and see all of the bare nothing that lays within and he’s going to think--

Your back touches the wall. It’s cold on your neck. Your hands don’t know what to do with themselves, just fumble around somewhere between your chest and his, and he gets this little smirk on his face (knowing, knowing, and you want to resent the knowing so much) and he pins them to the wall. Trails decadent fingers up your neck and it’s almost more than you can handle, and you want to escape, but you don’t want to hurt him, but maybe you do, and everything in you is a contradiction, a paradox, an enigma, and he’s eating it up--

And it doesn’t matter that you’re not wearing your face, because when his lips find yours in the belly of the shadow, your eyes are closed and your face is slack and all of your energy is going into feeling his lips with your lips and they feel so good, and they taste like salt and loneliness and there’s something in him, vibrating with some unforeseeable need and--

“We…” He sounds lost, but in a good way. “We need to talk.”

And this time, you don’t resist. And maybe it’s because as long as your lips are on his, there will be no words spoken, no thoughts exchanged, and maybe it’s because your lips on his and his lips on yours is the best kind of talking you’ve ever done.

* * *

 

You don’t think about sex.

And because of that, it takes you a long time to figure out that sex is what Daniel wants.

He drags you through the forgotten subway tunnels that lead to the Owl’s Nest, never letting go of your arm as though he’s afraid that you’ll slip away into one of the city’s cracks (he’s not particularly irrational for thinking this) and guides you through the basement, up the stairs, through the back door into the kitchen in one fluid motion. Your sign slips out of your hand and lands, noisily, on the floor, its words forgotten.

It’s only then that you allow yourself to speak. “Daniel.” You recognize the look of hunger in his eyes, but you can’t quite place where you've seen it before. “I--”

He takes another taste of your lips and you’re left hollow and shaky. Somehow, your coat ends up on the ground. You don’t care. Shedding it is like shedding an extra layer of fur that you no longer need at the start of the summer. Entering Dan’s arms is like the first day of an eternal heatwave.

“I missed you,” he says, and he’s taking steps backward, spreading fingers over your chest, eyes trailing across you and leaving the marks of touch. And you know that he’s connecting the features of Walter Kovacs’ face with the contours of your face, the stubbled jaw with the expanse of black and white, the ragged street clothes with the purple pinstriped suit, the bony structure underneath, the head of choppy red hair with the fedora of worn leather.

“Shouldn’t have,” you say, and you mean it. You don’t want to think about what he must have been doing while you’ve been gone. He shouldn't want you, not like this. He shouldn't try to force liking, or needing, or knowing, out of the touch-and-go partnership you've spent so long developing. He shouldn't tempt fate. Not with you. Not like this.  
  
And yet somehow, you're not stopping him from doing just that.

“But I did.” The upwards slant of his lips; they’re a challenge.

You tilt your head one way, and then the other, your brow furrowing. You purse your lips and the rest of Daniel’s house fades away into meaningless static. You lose yourself in the way he looks at you, the way he wraps his arms around your slim waist, runs his palms thoughtlessly over your back and makes his claim and it’s so wrong because _you know that hunger_ \--

And maybe it's not a good thing that all of your memories are tucked into the unlit corners of cobwebbed rooms behind the locked doors of a broken mind.

And he’s turning you around, guiding you down to the sofa, and he’s wrapping his legs around you, and he’s pressing his hips to yours, and you feel a heat beating between his legs, and he feels you in the same instant that you feel him and--something is wrong--

Because his heat is met by your… Nothing. His engines are on and you don't even have a car. There's something burning in him, and you don't even know what "fire" means compared to his drumbeat passion…

“Rorschach?”

Silence. You will your face not to move, not to give anything away, and it's always your eyes that betray you in the end--

“S-Sorry, should I call you something else? What’s your name?”

“My name?”  
  
“Your other name?” He seems distracted by something. “A-Am I crossing a line? Should I just call you Rorschach?”

You swallow. Work words around in your mouth, rearrange them on your tongue, but they never taste right, and you don’t let them escape your mouth.

“You… You’re not…” He’s looking at the space between your hips, searching for something that isn’t there, and you have no idea what he’s looking for, until you do--

It’s there. In your mother’s eyes. In the eyes of every man that ever walked into her room like he owned it. It’s in the eyes of every whore, every fuck-hungry man in every sex club in every broken corner of New York--

“You’re not into this, are y--”

It’s all you can do not to break, too, in your scramble to escape.

* * *

 

You shove him off of you with all of the force of a freight train at top speed, and it's his instinctual response to fight back, to pin you to the cushions, but he doesn't. He's a friend, you try to tell yourself. A friend. He would never...

"Trying to debase me, Daniel?"

"God, no, Rorschach--"  
  
"Touching me like that. Not a whore. Not a whore."  
  
"I never said you were."  
  
And now you  _are_ fighting, your fists against his open palms, fighting him through the living room, through the kitchen, hunting for an exit from this hell, and you can feel your childhood clawing at the remains of Walter Kovacs' corpse, and it hurts, even though he's long dead, his body cold, six feet under layers of dirt and regret and shame, and the claws that are digging into his stiff, white flesh are digging into you, pliable under their touch...

“Hey, hey, Rorschach, I’m not going to-- Fuck, man, I wasn’t trying to-- Look, don’t leave. Please. Okay? Please. I was so worried about you, and now that I’ve finally found you, I don’t think I can-- Fuck.”

You’re not quite sure where you are, and the sound of his voice is the only thing trying to pull you to the surface.

_Your mother is leaning over you. “What are you doing with your hands? Huh? Show them to me! You little whore.”_

And he’s wrapping his fingers around yours, and you think of the places your fingers have been, all the filthy things they’ve done, the things they’ve been forced to do, and you bite down on your lip to stop the scream on its way out of your throat.

_“Keep your damn mouth shut. You’re gonna like this.”_

"RORSCHACH!"  
  
It's the sound of that name, rather than Walter's, that brings you back to Daniel Dreiberg's kitchen. The room is spinning, but you can see it, and it's four finite walls, and he has his hands on you again, but the hunger is gone from his eyes (or maybe he's just gotten better at hiding it). "Rorschach? Are you with me? C'mon, buddy, I'm sorry..."

The hard weight of his warmth is gone. He runs his hands up and down your arms, rubbing feeling back into you. You realize that you're sitting down, with your back to the basement door. "Hey, look, we don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. I was just… I… It was stupid. I just thought… I thought you-- I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”

“Didn’t know you wanted those things,” you hear yourself say. The words don’t feel like your own. They shake and jump, and you’re drifting in and out of the here and now, stuck halfway between 1951 and 1975.

He looks confused. “Sex? Yeah, I mean… Yeah. Who doesn’t?”

Again, your eyes tell him things that you never knew yourself. Betrayers, unlike so much black and white. “I mean, if you’re not ready, or you just don’t want… Or you just don’t swing that way, or… Oh. _Oh_.”

And he’s on you again. But not in the way he was before. The hunger he hides is controlled in a way that your mother never was. And he’s next to you, nestled up to your side, fitting into the curves of your body like a missing puzzle piece, and he’s running those knowing fingers over your skin, pulling goosebumps out of you at will, and his proximity is powerful but it’s also reserved. The expression on his face says, “I’m here, but I’m only as close as you want me to be,” and you know that he wants that wet heat, and he wants your wet heat and you just don’t have any to give, not for him, not for anyone--

“It’s not you,” you find yourself whispering, as the sun recedes from the windows, and the house sinks into greater darkness. “It’s everyone.”

He completes your thought. “You don’t feel that way, for anyone.”

“No.”

“But the kiss…”  
  
“...wasn’t the same thing.”  
  
"You just did it because..."  
  
"...I wanted to."

Brown eyes meet blue. Life crawls through the sinews of his face, brings a smile to his lips. And he laughs and he laughs. And you know that it's not mockery, that it's not an insult, because it never is with Daniel. It's relief.

 

* * *

 

His cheek rests against your collarbone, his nose cold on your skin. He traces circles in your chest and it feels like home. “Sex isn’t wrong, you know.” You shudder, and it isn’t the touch, it’s the idea that he’s presenting, the images that his words conjure. “It doesn’t have to be dirty. It doesn’t have to be…” His voice loses power, his train of thought flying off the tracks. He recollects himself, a few moments later. “But that’s not why, is it? It’s not as if you have desire that you’re holding back out of some twisted hate or fear… There just is no desire to hold back.”

“Desire,” you correct. “But for other things.”

Your lips find his, for a third time. And you tilt your head, find his tongue, wrap yours around his, run teeth over his bottom lip, bite gently, taste the skin of his jaw, his neck, and his hands roam your chest (and it’s so natural for him, this exploration of your body, this voluntary expedition, and you know that if it were your hands on him, they wouldn’t know where to go, but he knows, he knows exactly where he’s headed--) and his palm cups the weight between your legs and again finds none of the electric heat that exists in him.

You pull back. “Disappointed?”

He thinks about the question before he speaks, and you’re glad, because at least when he lies, you’ll know that he’s only doing it because he cares.

“No.”


	8. Ink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue of sorts. I considered making this more dramatic but the point of this fic was to be fluffy and I feel like fluff-levels haven't quite reached maximum yet so here you go. (Made a few significant edits to this chapter shortly after I posted it. Added a chunk to the end.)

The warm reflection of open flame dances across the lenses of your glasses, setting your face aglow. You stoke the fire, only half paying attention to the waves of heat that wash over your front and chase away the chill of oncoming winter. Push a new log into the fire and watch it out of the corner of your eye, focus lingering on the unmoving figure lumped on the couch to your left.

“You don’t have to look so up tight,” you say. “This isn’t the street. There aren’t any thugs here. No one that needs roughing up.” But the way your partner is situated (hands plastered to his sides, silent and still under your scrutiny) suggests that a fight is just what he needs to loosen up all those nerves.

Rorschach mumbles something incoherent before raising his voice into a register that you can pick up. “Used to your kitchen.”

“It’s just my living room, Rorschach. Don’t get cold feet on me now.” You close the furnace door and fold your arms, exasperated, glowering as though the weight of your stare has the power to force the clothes off of him by force of will alone. “C’mon, I got the fire going, you have to be hot under there.”

The way his mask has come alive, ink flying in all directions, confirms as much. He turns away, trying to hide what’s obvious.

And you’re sliding into the spot next to him, snaking arms around his waist (he’s so _small_ , all of those extra layers such a well constructed lie, and you know that somewhere under there is a man who isn’t nearly as put-together as he pretends to be). He stiffens at the hint of your fingers gliding over fabric. Can feel every move you make, all the way through the trench coat.

“Come on. Let go. Just this once.”

And you try to hide just how badly you want all those clothes off and on the floor. How good he’d look in little more than hot, sweaty, heaving skin. Vulnerable and human. A person with flaws and needs, no matter how good he is at hiding them. No matter how perfect he feels under your fingers.

“Can’t give you what you want.” He tilts his head down, further away from you.

Your smile fades. “What I want is only as much as you want to give,” you say. Pull him tighter, nuzzle into the side of his face, lips finding friction against latex.

“Lie.” He pulls away halfheartedly. You know that he could put you on the floor. Break every necessary bone in your body. Leave you to choke on your own blood, alone, to the sound of the crackling fire a few feet away. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t force his way out of your arms. He could. But he doesn’t want to.

“It’s not a lie.” You take him gently by the shoulers. Rub a thumb over cloth. “I feel things for you that you don’t and can’t feel for me, yeah. I want to do things with you that you'll likely never want or need. And there’s not a whole lot I can do about that, about these urges, short of maybe castrating myself.”

He shifts uncomfortably.  
  
“But I also feel other things for you that you _do_ feel for me, if I’m not mistaken.” You work your hands between his trench and his suit jacket, peeling the first layer off of him and leaving it on the ground. “I’d never expect something out of you that you weren’t freely willing to give. This… This thing… Whatever this is that exists between us… It’s not a mutual taking. It’s a mutual giving.” His suit jacket is next. And then you’re working studiously on the buttons of his vest. “I’m giving this to you. Because I want to.” You lean over him. Part the buttons of his dress shirt. Expose his pale chest, expanding and contracting shakily; and it looks as though he’s afraid to take a breath too big, afraid to show that he’s alive, afraid of the implications that might have.

You lick your lips and apply them, wet, to his chest. A kiss here, another there, leaving white spots wherever you go that fade after a few seconds but leave goosebumps for much longer than that. Your arms are around him again. Gliding into his shirt and running over jittery flesh. And it’s everything you imagined, and it's nothing you imagined. He’s just as human as you always knew he was, and a thousand times more human than your fantasies portrayed him to be.

Your lips find themselves trapped at the line where skin ends and latex begins, and you’re sucking at the base of his neck, eliciting a deep hum that vibrates through his chest and yours. Lips pull back and teeth are latching onto his skin, biting softly, and that hum gets louder, fuller, in the orange glow created by the fire.

“Please,” you say. Because you want this to be his decision. Because it’s not your choice to make.

Rorschach’s hands lift from where they sat rigidly at his sides; you feel them make tentative contact with your hips. Fingers tracing bone and the contours of muscles through your jeans. And suddenly the noises coming from deep inside of him are curious and confused. Something guttural in the back of his throat. Not all that different from the sounds he makes while pouring over the evidence of a particularly mysterious crime. Scouring all of the disconnected bits and pieces one at a time, meticulously sorting them out and making sense of them. A newspaper clipping, a witness report, a lost shoe. Your thighs, the curve of your back, the sensitive parts of you that respond too readily to his touch. He runs his hands over your ribs, over your chest, and makes sense of you--as though you’re the toughest case he’s ever had to crack.

His ink has scattered to all parts of his face, seas of the stuff migrating and merging with other seas, only to break apart and find a temporary home elsewhere. Pooling for brief seconds over his cheeks, and then around his eyes, and then above his lips as he releases an uneven rush of air.

You know the structure that sits underneath. Watch firelight and shadow dance across his face and map out exactly where his cheekbones are, the way his jaw is moving (tasting the beginnings of words and abandoning them for others, just as unspoken), where the deviations of his eyes sit; picture pupils darting left and right, instincts probably telling him to escape. And all you want to do is say, “You don’t have to escape. Because this isn’t a prison. And my home is not a cell. And you are safe.”

And you don’t need to see him through the latex, because you can read the ink of his face and it’s saying those three incomprehensible little words that neither of you have the resolve or the gut to say aloud, for all of your training and all of the victories you’ve forced from the hands of criminals in the night.

And you do want to do things to him. Dirty, foul things. You want to see him moan under the not-so-delicate fingers of hands that turn the pages of Ornithological texts by day and apply cuffs by night. But you’d never ask those things of him, because the moment that you’re sharing here in the warmth and the calm is infinitely more valuable than one-way-sex.

You grin and a laugh escapes from between your lips and you pull close to him, sitting down in his lap and he’s breathing so fast and he reaches up and yanks his mask off of his head, lungs begging for oxygen, and you give him just enough time to suck a mouthful of air from the room before planting your lips on his and manifesting everything you’ve felt over the course of years into physical form. And his head tilts to the side, pushes forward into thin air, and you accommodate, your body molding to his, and the mask is forgotten, like so many other useless articles of clothing, on the floor. And it’s almost as if the man under that mask is alive again. Reanimated by the festering passion between you. But you couldn't care less whether or not that man is alive, because Rorschach is alive and he’s here and he cares about you, so much, and he matters so much more than an apparition lost in the throes of war.

And then he breaks free, meets your gaze through dense clouds of wonder. “Walter,” he says.

You release a breath that might have started out as a word but didn't end as one.

“Name was Walter. Kovacs.” His muscles tighten visibly. You lean in to kiss the tension out of his face, try to heal some of the wounds in those eyes.

“As long as you want to be, you’re Rorschach to me.”

“Dead,” he mutters. It almost sounds like an apology. “Dead like so many other--”

“A casualty of war. The part of you that was Walter. But that’s okay. I-- We’re in the here and now. And what happened months ago, a year ago, ten years ago, twenty-- It doesn’t matter anymore. Because you have me and I have you and I’m never leaving your side.”

Supple lips mold over his tongue. Open up and invite him inside. Feel him scope out the inside of your mouth. Pull back again, a string of saliva and hot air connecting your parted lips.

“Not even in the face of armageddon.”

“Not even in the face of armageddon.”

 

* * *

 

Two years from now, you will find yourself among tombstones and wilted flowers and whispered prayers and dried tears and so much budding death, and you'll hunt for the grave of Blair Roche among dozens of other graves that all seem futile, all seem inevitable, in the scope of your recently expanded worldview.

You will cast hollow eyes over where her name was carved into cheap and nondescript stone. Study the ground under which her body rests. Kneel before it and wonder why everything has to end. The Minutemen. The Crimebusters. The partnership that blossomed and faded between the second Nite Owl and the Terror of the Unerworld.

The last vestiges of sanity lingering in the depths of a broken mind.

You hadn't mourned the death of Walter Kovacs, but when he had died, you hadn't expected Rorschach to follow.

And Nite Owl _doesn't break the law_ , damn it, and if Keene says that it's time for the masks to go then--

But Nite Owl also doesn't abandon his partner. Doesn't abandon the innocent people of New York. Even if they've forgotten what's good for them. Nite Owl didn't become Nite Owl because he was under the impression that life as a mask would be easy. He didn't do it because it was legal.

He did it because it needed to be done.

You will leave roses by her grave, murmur a few belated goodbyes (maybe a few apologies, too), and you will stand and prepare to search the streets of New York for your partner's walking corpse. Hope that you can breathe life into what's already dead, and know that you can't.  
  
Two years from now.

But in this moment, strung between choppy seconds, Rorschach still comfortably cocooned in your arms, you will whisper promises in his ear that you can't keep.

And he will believe them.


End file.
